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Friday, 24 February 2012

The Five Gait Patterns of Sasquatch

Firstly I want to draw attention to the work done by the Facebook Find Bigfoot crew. Without their countless hours of compiling data, analysis like this would not be possible.

There are five gait patterns seen in the record of Sasquatch motion pictures:

Walking with small vertical displacement of the centre of gravity

Walking with large vertical displacement of the centre of gravity

Biped Jog/trot

Biped Sprinting/running

Quadruped running

Walking with small vertical displacement of the centre of gravity

Main characteristics: Very stable torso while walking, the head and shoulders move up and down less than typical human walking. The Sasquatch seems to glide or float. They move swiftly and fluidly. Fast or brisk walk. Fast cadence of footsteps.

Possible Explanations #1: Heelstrike walking with compliant gait. Dr. Jeff Meldrum has examined hundreds of footprints collected across North America and has come up with a theory of mid-tarsal break. Bipedal walking with a mid-tarsal break foot suggests "compliant gait" meaning that the knees are bent throughout the entire step cycle. This is mainly due to the decreased moment of inertia (torque) around the ankle joint that accompanies mid-tarsal break (difficult to explain, I will attempt to do this in another video or article). Basically, this type of walking is consistent with the footprint evidence.

Possible Explanation #2: Patterson-Gimlin Film is a hoax and since then many hoaxers have attempted to copy the gait in the PGF.

Final Word: This type of walking is probably the fast walking mode of the Sasquatch. Probably walk like this on flat terrain where footing is good.

Walking with large vertical displacement of the centre of gravity

Main characteristics: Centre of gravity rises and falls with each step. Up and down movement of head and shoulders is greater than typical walking in humans. Forward movement almost stops with each step. Slow speed. Slow cadence of footsteps.

Possible Explanation #1: Forefoot strike walking. The creatures in this video are landing with the front part of the foot rather than the heel. This causes the characteristics discussed above. Apes with mid-tarsal break often walk like this and can even switch between heelstrike and forefoot strike walking (Dr. Aaron Filler, 7min mark). Consistent with footprint evidence, especially half-tracks found, because sometimes only the front part of the foot would contact ground.

Possible Explanation #2: This type of walking is caused by persons in suits trying to take long strides. This explains the up and down movement with each step, and the near stop to the forward movement with each step. Trying to take big steps also causes an in-line trackway because the hips rotate to make the step longer.

Final Word: This might be the method Sasquatch use for walking slowly. This method of walking is the most common in the video record. There is a problem with this type of walking: it is very inefficient. It takes a lot of energy to move the centre of gravity up and down with each step. Natural selection does not tolerate inefficiency. However, there might be a couple reasons to explain this: (1) improve traction. Humans do this when walking on hard slippery surfaces. (2) Stealth, perhaps it lets them step more softly and quietly. (3) depth perception, human move their head laterally (left/right) a few centimetres to change perspective slightly and gain a better depth perception. Perhaps Sasquatch necks cannot move this way because the head is set closer to the shoulder, they move vertically instead.

Biped Jog/trot

Main characteristics: Slightly faster than walking, slightly faster cadence than walking. Elbows are flexed but very little arm movement. Short airborne phase (period of both feet off the ground). Mid-foot or forefoot landing. Similar to barefoot human running.

Examples: To my knowledge the only example is the final seconds of the Soybean Ohio video

Final Word: Theoretically possible for Sasquatch to bipedal jog. Not much else to say.

Biped Sprinting/running

Main characteristics: Full run. Fast. Arms pumping. Long airborne phase (period of both feet off the ground). Long strides. Heelstrike landing. Torso rotation with each step.

Possible Explanation #1: Sasquatch bipedal run very similar to the way humans run when wearing shoes.

Possible Explanation #2: Human in a suit.

Final Word: These videos are probably hoaxes or mis-identification. This type of gait does not fit well with mid-tarsal break theory. It is my hypothesis that Sasquatch cannot run the way humans do. I will address this in more detail in another article. Briefly, the main reasons are: (1) Human barefoot runners do not run with the characteristics above. It is more of a trot or slow jog, strides are much shorter, and they land with the mid-foot or front part of the foot. (2) Sasquatch arms are too long to pump when running. (3) Foot anatomy of Sasquatch as inferred from footprints suggests a decreased speed advantage for angular velocity about the ankle joint. (4) Ligaments in the foot at the mid-tarsal break would not be able to support the forces of a 500+ lbs animal biped running.

Quadruped Running

Main characteristics: Very fast. Running on all four limbs, similar to gorilla or chimpanzee.

Possible explanation #1: Sasquatch can quadruped run the same way Gorillas and Chimps do. Consistent with long arms observed in the best videos. Consistent with mid-tarsal break foot anatomy and function since Gorillas and Chimps have mid-tarsal break feet.

Possible Explanation #2: Mis-identified bears.

Final Word: This is probably the method Sasquatch use to sprint. This gait would be very difficult to fake. Some possibility the New York video is a bear, but it seems very unlikely that the PEI video could be a bear.